Vacuum sealing appliances are used domestically and commercially to evacuate air from various containers such as plastic bags, reusable rigid plastic containers, or mason jars. These containers are often used for storing food. Vacuum sealing food packaging provides many benefits with a particular advantage of preserving the freshness and nutrients of food for a longer period of time than if food is stored while exposed to ambient air.
Typically, these appliances operate by receiving a bag, isolating the interior of the bag from ambient air, and drawing air from the interior of the bag before sealing it. One such appliance is a “Seal-A-Meal” product marketed by the Rival Company since at least 1982. This device utilized a simple nozzle to evacuate air from bags, while a single sealing door operated in conjunction with a heat-sealer to seal the bag closed. Other appliances have also been available to evacuate rigid containers such as jars.
A problem with these appliances is the necessity to seal the open end of the bag from the ambient air during the evacuation process. For this reason, many of these appliances use resilient foam sealing strips on the base and cover to isolate the opening of the bag from ambient air during sealing. However, such strips, which extend around the entire opening of the bag, make operation of the device cumbersome and require the use of a large device, which is longer than the open end of the bag.
Specifically, the resilient foam strips often interfere with the closing of the cover of sometimes making it difficult to securely fasten the cover in the closed position. Failure to securely close the cover permits ambient air to be drawn in during evacuation and prevents efficient operation of the device.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a vacuum sealing device that is easy to close while sealing the open end of the bag from ambient air during evacuation.
Additionally, in order to completely surround and seal off the open end of the bag from the surrounding environment and to thereby deny the intake of outside air during the evacuation process, it is necessary for an appliance of the prior art to be significantly is longer than the open end of the bag. This results in the occupation of an undesirably large amount of kitchen shelf space and storage space for the appliance.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a vacuum sealing device that is smaller in size, yet which may still be able to evacuate and seal full sized plastic bags.
Additionally, Such large appliances of the prior art generally include within their bodies a heavy vacuum pump, which becomes burdensome as the heavy body of the device must be moved towards the user for access.
It would therefore be desirable to provide such a vacuum sealing device in which only a lighter and less cumbersome portion of the device must be moved and lifted and the portion containing the heavy pump may remain in a base station position.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the applicable art upon a review of the following description of the present invention, including drawings and detailed descriptions of several preferred embodiments thereof.